The Hangover 3 Review - OR - The Wangover

Plot

Alan’s (Zach Galifianakis) father has died and, while attending the funeral, his Wolf-Pack best-friends – brother-in-law Doug (Justin Bartha), potty-mouthed Phil (Bradley Cooper) and whipping-boy Stu (Ed Helms) – are roped into an intervention to help save him from self-destruction. Unsurprisingly however, things do not go smoothly and, after being intercepted by jowly gangster Marshall (John Goodman), they are forced into a cross-country manhunt for yappy maniac Chow (Ken Jeong) to save the hostaged Doug’s life.

You see the general look of pain and tiredness? Yep, Hangover 3.

 Review

Once upon a time, Todd Phillips threatened to kick-start the Hollywood comedy scene with a little-known, and less expected, sense of energetic debauchery. With The Hangover he rendered an addictive mix of crass humour, frenetic dialogue and frantic chaos that promised the beginning of not just a new series, but also a whole new sub-genre. Then The Hangover 2 happened, did the exact same thing all over again and promptly shot its future in the foot. The movement died before it began. Now The Hangover 3 – where it all supposedly ‘ends’ – has been churned out to end the ad-hoc trilogy on a high, but can it avoid the pit-falls of its predecessor?

If Hangover 3 isn’t a complete and resolute reaction to Hangover 2 then I’m the king of France. The narrative formula has been completely diced up – there isn’t even a hangover – and the characterising story beats of the previous films are all but absent. Even the cameos are less ‘cameos’ more ‘actual characters.’ While making for a fresher experience, this has led to the film losing all sense of direction; the story is scrambled and aimless and not in the good ‘ha, look at those drunken idiots’ kind of way. Zipping from Thailand to Mexico to Las vegas, Hangover 3 is a shameless memory trip. Whereas the second film remade the first film in its entirety, the third merely revisits everything that happened before with a wink and a nudge, desperately trying to suck some nourishment from the bones of nostalgia. It’s hard to tell which is worse.

Sucking a lolly, or impaled his tongue?

Then again, The Hangover was never about the story. It’s all about the Wolf Pack, and while the writing is far more miss than hit this time around the undeniable chemistry between the central trio is still proves entertaining, if not somewhat tired. Some visual gags work brilliantly and the dialogue between Stu, Phil and Alan zips with effortless fluency. If Hangover 3 does mark the end of the series (and let’s hope to all the hopes in hopeland that it does) it’ll have done well by its characters at any rate.

Calling Hangover 3 fresh is like saying the toilet makes for a passable drink; it is technically true, at least it can be in the right minute context, it’s just that there are a thousand more appropriate words to use first and what the hell are you doing you maniac? Yes the story is different, but difference is not inherently a good thing, it still needs to be a well-constructed difference that – oh, I dunno – makes sense and has an impression of purpose.

Damn, sucking a lolly.

As it is, Hangover 3 is the epitome of flogging the dead horse. It reeks of laziness and while the cast do their jobs perfectly well that’s just the problem: they are just doing the job. It’s formulaic and baseline, bereft of the energy and playful vigour that brought the original to life. Bradley Cooper in particular seems so thoroughly bored of the entire affair you can practically see him dreaming about last year’s Oscar nomination and wondering how the hell he ended up here again. Ultimately, while the trio do work well together as a comic entity they seem far more like old friends weary of their work and desperate for retirement than excitable up-starts chomping at the bit to blow their genre wide open.

It says a lot that Hangover 3’s base dependence for laughs derive from an Asian man being stupid. Ken Jeong’s Chow was brilliant in the original because he was used sparingly. However, there’s only so much chinglish and sex jokes screeched in a funny accent that a film can take before it nosedives majestically into irritating and wearying, not to mention a teensy bit racist. Elsewhere, John Goodman’s Marshall is good for a some sinister laughs and Melissa McCarthy shows up near the end to steal a few scenes as she is want to do. 

That’s your lot. Now sit back and watch tired men scream at things for a couple of hours. But at least it's better than the moist rancid cess-pool of broken hopes and dreams that 21 And Over was.

Taking a crap in the desert is never easy, but Dave's friends never know why he brought them with him.

Verdict

For fans of the series, Hangover 3 offers everything you’ve come to know and enjoy re-jigged for no reason other than ‘at least they can’t complain like what they did for Hangover 2.’ For everyone else, it’s an exercise in apathy, the embodiment of ‘meh’ to make for passable entertainment on a quiet evening. Just please please please let this be the last one.

2/5

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The Great Gatsby Review - OR - Steppety-Step and Jazz Hands!

Plot

Seeking to hit it big in the Big Apple, Nick Carroway (Toby Maguire) – a wannabe writer and WWI veteran – moves to Long Island to work in stocks. He rents a small house next door to the castle-mansion of elusive partyboy millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and, after reacquainting with his cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and her husband Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), Nick is swiftly thrown into the heart of New York’s grandiloquent nouveau riche party culture. It isn’t long however before Gatsby comes calling and draws the unwitting Nick into his world of secrets, extravagancies and lost love.

Dem Fezzes.

Review

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has enjoyed a mythic reputation since it’s publication nearly 90 years ago. Considered among as part of the ‘Great American Novel’ pantheon of literature, it’s been subject to four previous – largely unsuccessful – screen adaptations. Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby heralds its return to the cinematic big-screen – complete with Luhrmann-esque high-concept visual flare and stylistic wizardry – but can it prove to be the adaptation that Fitzgerald’s work has been waiting for?

It ain’t no Romeo & Juliet.

The Great Gatsby is a near relentless, frenetic, aesethic thunderpunch to the eyes and ears. It’s coloured like a Sunday morning cartoon with the same level of energy, sprinting eagerly from scene-to-scene, cut-to-cut. So far as visceral and visual entertainment goes, Gatsby is resolutely from the Luhrmann camp of kinetic stylistic extravagance.

Having never before been to Thailand, Nick was amazed at what they could hide up there.

However, for each scene of breakneck party fabulousness there’s another of slow contemplation, where dialogue between characters – intended for exposition – feels slow and unwieldy, hindered by Luhrmann’s dedication to his breathless technique. Fortunately then, Gatsby is helped no end by a startling central turn by Leonardo DiCaprio. Equal parts grinning heartthrob and ominous man of mystery, DiCaprio knocks it out of the park, putting the rest of the resolutely one-dimensional cast to shame.

Gatsby is not entirely insubstantial, as some reviews may claim. It’s just there is such a monumental omnipresence of all-singing, all-dancing pomp and celebration – such a deluge of colour, life and vigour – that it could have all the substance in the world and still not live up to it’s own eye-melting stylistic supremacy. As it stands, the Sin City­-esque torrent of CGI and theatrical expression is sometimes almost wearying in its attempts to wow, often losing that sense of humility and humanity that made Luhrmann’s equally ostentatious Romeo & Juliet work.

Gatsby ultimately suffers from a basic lack of care in its direction. Numerous plot points are terribly handled, either dealt with too explicitly or, more frequently, presented far too subtly to ever hope to register properly. Case in point: Gatsby and his fortune are supposed to an imperceptible countrywide mystery. And they are. So much so that the film barely deigns to tell you the truth and yet has his secrecy diegetically blown with, seemingly, a few simple phone calls. It’s this lack of care, this bewildering absence of narrative sheen considering the stylistic and graphical finesse, that leaves the entire production feeling somewhat undernourished.

The longer you stare, the more it feels as though he's making love to your soul itself.

This isn’t to say that Gatsby is a failure in terms of narrative, characters, themes and all those lovely abstract notions (though there’s much to be said for its light hand in dealing with the sticky issues of society and its inherent degradation, an omnipotent force in Fitzgerald’s book). Merely that they could not even wipe the derriere of its extraordinary technical achievements. Much a boisterous fanfare has been made of Gatsby’s soundtrack – mixing Jay-Z, Florence & the Machine, electro babble and classical strings in the freakiest musical cauldron this side of Eurovision – but its effect is much the same as everything else: masterfully entertaining but ultimately superficial.

There’s been arguments made that Baz Luhrmann was simply not the right man to make this film, his style too fundamentally avant-garde to work with the subtle treatise many believe The Great Gatsby to be. And that’s total rubbish. Any man who can turn Romeo & Juliet into a homoerotically charged street gangster bow-out can do whatever the hell he likes. And he so nearly gets it right with Gatsby. It’s exciting, awe-inspiring at times and undeniably entertaining and if he had just held himself back an inch, allowed the characters to breathe away from the cloying air of deprived social excess, Gatsby may have found itself competing for far more than the highest summer gross

It's not the perspective, they're just very small men.

Verdict

While lacking in regards to its source material’s heavy critique of societal flaws, The Great Gatsby can count itself a success. It’s experimental in some ways, older than the hills in others (and completely loses the plot in others still) but it – mostly – remains a spectacular, entertaining romp through a bygone era.

3/5

Epic epic trailer:

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Star Trek Into Darkness Review - OR - Star Trek Into The Murky Grey

Plot

One year after saving Earth from the Romulans, Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and his USS Enterprise are an established member of the galactic Star Fleet. Peace is not on the agenda however. Following a terrorist attack in London, Star Fleet finds itself under fire from within and Kirk, along with First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) and the rest of his crew, go on a hunt into enemy space to capture the one-man army John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch).

So far as "Guess who the villain is?' games go, this is amateur level.

Review

Once upon a time, it was tantamount to social suicide to even remotely attribute yourself to ‘nerd-dom.’ Sci-fi wasn’t cool. Neither were video games or space unless it was the ‘landing on the moon’ type. Times have, of course, changed and the fate of famed sci-fi television series Star Trek was steered confidently into the mainstream sphere by J. J. Abram’s 2009 big-budget cinematic reboot. Star Trek Into Darknessmarks the return of Abram’s universe to the big screen, but can it prove to be a case of Star Trek Strikes Back?

Abrams went on record saying that he wanted Into Darkness to be a far more fan-friendly affair, a homage to the beloved universe of Gene Rodenberry’s original series. Thankfully, with references and quips galore, along with a story playing heavily off the 2009 film’s time-travel/new-universe trick, it performs admirably. Doing everything it can to please longtime enthusiasts without losing the previous film’s sense of contemporary fun and vigour (and the crowds consequently captured) Into Darkness strikes a happy medium to make a film that is equal parts goofily amusing, electrically engaging and peerlessly entertaining.

In the future, London's gonna freakin' love polygons. And blue.

All of the original crew are back and better than ever, seemingly far more comfortable in their roles, with each helming far more substantial personal story arcs than in the previous film. While Kirk and Spock’s love/hate ying & yang relationship is still very much at the heart of things, each member of the Enterprise’s crew has their time in the limelight. Abrams has proven his ability with ensemble casts before (Lost) and the writing/direction is such that the characters feel as real as they could ever hope to in Into Darkness’s high fantasy, sci-fi universe. Oddly enough, it’s the Kirk-Spock dynamic that often feels weakest (outside of the cringe worthy ‘romance’ between Spock and Uhura (Zoe Saldana)) and ham-fisted, their interaction – while often witty and entertaining – too obviously expositional to work organically.

While the supporting cast are unanimously engaging - Simon Pegg’s Scotty is immaculately comedic while Karl Urban is the master of hammy over-acting as ‘Bones’ McCoy – it’s Cumberbatch who steals the show however as the one man WMD John Harrison. Oozing an icy malevolence and incomparable power, he’s effortlessly intriguing and wonderfully developed across cat & mouse battles of wits and brutal head-cracking battles of strength alike.

'And a tickle under there!' Bones reverts to his paediatrician origins. And love of blue.

It’s just a shame that, much like the narrative in general, his development seems slightly off-key, never quite reaching the dizzying heights he seems capable of. Into Darkness makes a big deal of emphasizing pseudonym Harrison’s genocidal power but never gives him the chance to prove it. Ultimately, for all the talk of war, death and darkness, everything concludes feeling more than a little damp and anti-climactic. Plot gaffs aside, the second act does an outstanding job of ratcheting up the dramatic stakes and tension, but fails in providing a satisfying enough conclusion.

Having said that, Into Darkness is an action home run and whatever narrative niggles that crop up during are easily drowned out by the sheer visceral excitement of it all. The introductory scene – opening deliciously in media res during a Star Fleet mission – gives the audience a tribal chase, a lush alien planet and a supervolcano explosion. All before the opening credits role. It’s masterful stuff and while later scenes may fail to live up to the unassailable benchmark set early on, they’ll still get the blood pumping and the goose bumping. Warp speed space battles, plenty o’ punch-ups and a huge-scale free-fall: there’s more than enough going on to sustain that ‘edge-of-the-seat’ sensation.

See how they're in shadow but it's light in the background? It's like a metaphor or something... Also blue.

Into Darkness - and it’s place within it’s own legacy - is perhaps best summarised by one of it’s strongest scenes. In clear homage to it’s 2009 forbearer, one scene sees Kirk and co performing a space jump between ships through a minefield of debris. It’s tense, exciting stuff – flashy and beautiful - and yet…not as good as the respective scene in Star Trek 2009. While bigger and flashier, Into Darkness just cannot quite get from under its predecessor’s shadow – so to speak – and ultimately feels universally ‘not quite as good’ outside of the action set pieces and antagonist. The story and pacing are weaker, dialogue too outside of the majestically OTT ‘Bones’ McCoy and it cannot even claim to be darker. Despite the subtitle, there is very little darkness – metaphorical or otherwise – to be had while the first film sported planet destruction, actual genocide and the near destruction of Earth itself.

While hardcore Trek fans may lament the commercialisation of their beloved series into a mainstream action extravaganza (despite Abrams efforts) and the narrative feel several shades of weak throughout, Star Trek Into Darknessis still a glorious success. Musically, graphically and dialogically remarkable, it never stops striving for that all-important cinematic principle: ‘entertainment.’

Quite where the series will go from here is anyone’s guess with Abrams jumping ship to a galaxy far far away, but he has left it in an imperiously strong position to boldly go where no Star Trek series has gone before.

Alice Eve's Dr. Carol Marcus, one thing Star Trek 2009 certainly didn't have. BLUUEEE!

Verdict

Though the ending may fail to successfully build upon an outstanding opening and raucous second act build-up, Star Trek into Darkness is a robust success. Championing set-piece after set-piece of explosive action the likes of which other films could only ever dream of, excellently realised characters and a genuine sense of fun without losing the respective sense of drama, it’s the embodiment of full-faced cinematic entertainment.

4/5

Embrace the darkness. Or something. And blue:

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21 And Over Review - OR - F*****g Stupid S**t F*****g W****r F************k

Plot

On the evening of his 21^stbirthday, straight As nerdy student Jeff Chang (Justin Chon) is visited by his high-school best friends - lewd loud mouthed Miller (Miles Teller) and hard working, career minded Casey (Skylar Astin) – who want to take him out on a once in a lifetime party blowout to celebrate his ascension into manhood. Naturally however, things do not go smoothly. After overcoming the oppressive control of Jeff’s father Dr. Chang (François Chou) – and with Jeff’s make or break job interview looming the next morning – can the three friends have the night of their life and make it home in time?

They didn't have the heart to tell him that no one else was in the bar.

 Review

When The Hangover landed in 2009 it brought with it a renewed comedic vigour not to mention almost a new genre: the booze-up. With a focus on laddish humour and with a finger pressed firmly to the pulse of ridiculousness (not to mention the help of a genius cameo) it proved a monumental hit. Writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, after working on the sequel and this summer’s threequel, mark their debut in the directing world with 21 & Over. Can they strike gold twice?

No they can’t. Really really really can’t, bro.

With a film like 21 & Over, it’s difficult to decide where to start tearing. The entirely vapid – and yet still unrepentantly unpleasant and unlikeable – characters? The woefully poor writing, comedic or otherwise? The nonexistent ‘plot’? The ludicrous pitiable set-pieces? The entirely flaccid ending? The sheer suffocating boring pointlessness of it all?

21 & Over is a universally, miraculously awful film. But let’s follow that order:

This 'gag' is done twice, because what joke isn't funnier when you hear it again 10 minutes later?

Characters are stupendously formulaic, branching from stereotype to archetype: there’s the stern Chinese father, the nerdy Chinese boy, the studious Jew, the sexy blonde girl-next-door, the douchebag frat-boy and the college drop-out. Not to mention every single other character, event and ‘theme’ (if you can use that word) present.

It says a lot that Skylar Astin’s Casey is one of the few highlights of the film not because the performance is good – he is, in fact, an entirely superficial creation, the charcterisation of which goes as far as ‘he’s a Jew in a suit lolz’ – but, in comparison to the eye-tearingly, gut-punchingly ceaseless repugnancy of Miles Teller’s Miller, he seems like a nice chap. Miller is without a doubt one of the least likeable, most obnoxious and plainly revolting creations in cinema history. Nasty characters can be fun (see Bradley Cooper’s Phil in The Hangover) when they’re well written and still feel like they may have a sense of humanity to them. Miller doesn’t – he’s like the spiritual child of Due Date’s similarly repellent Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) – and is remarkable in his awfulness. If, in fact, he’s a genius satire of college life and comedy itself, then kudos to the writing/directing duo. But seeing as Hell will have long been frozen over by flying icy pigs by then…it doesn’t seem likely.

Pictured: the symbolic crux of the narrative.

Faultlessly formulaic is probably the most apt description of 21…or maybe not actually. There’s so little to this film, so little to actually enjoy outside of the dudebro torrent of swear words and needless racism, it feels almost entirely pointless. There’s clearly been as much care put into the writing and directing that the average person invests in a bowel movement, so why should the audience bother either?

Bottom line, 21 can’t even be reasonably defended as an ‘adult comedy.’ Swearing, drinking, nudity and casual racism/sexism does not an adult comedy make. Believe it or not, adult comedies require the same amount of effort and writing ability as any other film, comedy or no.

There will be some no doubt, who smirk and guffaw about ‘being a prude’ and clearly, if you don’t find it funny, you just ‘don’t get it so run off back to Diary of a Whimpy Kid, thank you very much.’  And these people are the problem, the sort of person who thinks that incongruously calling an Asian person yellow is hilarious because haha Asian people. Or Jews are funny because they’re Jews. Or swearing is funny because of reasons, so lets swear all the time whenever we can over and over and over again. What better way to inject a laugh into a scene than to mumble ‘pussy’ at a wall?

Bodily fluids are shared with wanton abandon, stereotypes are laughed at, dialogue drowns under swearing, women are objectified and a guy eats a tampon: all of these things are jokes in 21, in place of actual writing and the comedic set-up/pay-off dynamic. It’s as lazy as it is wearisome, funny only to the blind drunk or, apparently, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore.

He's wearing a tie? At a party? What a dork!

What’s the point, what are the stakes? Who knows, who cares! The film certainly doesn’t. So long as the young guys keep drinking and swearing (because what else is there to college life after all?) nothing else matters.

Adult comedies have the potential to be incredibly entertaining (from Hot Fuzzto Bad Santa to The Hangover) dumb in the best possible, nonsensical, way. Humour doesn’t need to be refined or intelligent, it doesn’t need layers of exposition or intrigue, it doesn’t even need to make any sense so long as the punch lines are well written and well delivered. 21does neither of these things. Being ‘dumb’ isn’t merely the absence of intelligence, it’s a style all of it’s own and 21 blatantly doesn’t grasp that idea. It’s beyond dumb and finds itself wallowing in the mire of the blindly, unbearably, unpleasantly dull.

To add insult to injury, the sporadic scenes of exposition – where characters perplexingly start talking about their past or the futures for no discernable reason – are perhaps the funniest parts of all. Not because they’re comedic, but because they are so poorly handled and so utterly devoid of any of the depth the scenes are obviously aiming for. Ultimately, when characters as wholly odious like Miller start pandering for sympathy the reaction is to wish pain upon him, not retribution for his issues. Especially when such issue is the ultimate first-world problem: ‘you aren’t f*****g cool anymore, dude. Why won’t you be f*****g cool and drink your f*****g life away with me, you f**k?’ While it can’t be confirmed that that’s an actual line of ‘dialogue,’ it’s a damn close match.

Human sacrifice, here a more jolly affair than in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.

Verdict

A woefully unfunny, insultingly bad (and just plain insulting) clusterfuck in every way possible. I’ve had more entertaining leg cramps.

1/5

A trailer...if you feel like you need to watch even a bit of this film:

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